By Bobby Tanzilo Senior Editor/Writer Published Jun 10, 2014 at 11:57 AM

This morning Mayor Tom Barrett, County Executive Chris Abele and Jim Barry of the Commercial Association of Realtors (CARW) held a press conference on the site of demolished Sydney Hih building on the corner of 3rd and Juneau to talk about the future of the roughly four square blocks -- just over 11 acres -- of Park East land that runs west from the river. 

The land was opened up for development with the 2002 demolition of the Park East freeway spur.

"For a long period of time there has been nothing going on this site, but that doesn’t mean that this part of the city has been dormant," Barrett said. "Completely surrounding this area there has been a lot of activity going on. Now is our time to work together as a community to do what we can to enliven this area."

Barrett pointed the The Moderne, the Aloft hotel, the headquarters of Bartolotta Restaurants, development at The Brewery site, the new Bucks’ ownership and discussions about a new arena, and a new pocket park and Associated Bank that are currently under construction.

"The continued development of the Park East will be a major spur to economic development not only in this corridor but really throughout the state, throughout the region," said Barry. "It will mean a new, modern gateway to Downtown Milwaukee."

Barrett, Barry and Abele all mentioned the most high-profile project -- and failure -- that’s been discussed for the space: the attempt to lure the Kohl’s headquarters Downtown.

"That’s water over the dam," Barrett said. "What we have now is an opportunity going forward ... we feel that this part of Downtown is ready to explode."

About 100 realtors, brokers, media and others were on hand to hear about a new marketing campaign and streamlined, rolling RFP process to get deals done on this land.

"What we’re doing here is we’re bringing the A team," Barrett said. "But what we really need is the private sector, the realtors, the brokers, the brokers who know the businesses and know the opportunities."

Part of that marketing campaign is site signage, a logo, a brochure and a web site. These are the result of an ad hoc committee that included representatives from the city, the county, the state and CARW.

"After we unfortunately didn’t get a giant Kohl’s headquarters down here a bunch of us wanted to make sure we learned everything we possibly could out of it so we decided to put together a task force and asked as many people who had something to contribute to that discussion and could inform it as possible," Abele said. "We spent a lot of time deconstructing what went right, what went wrong. What did we do well and what could we do better?"

Abele added that many questions stood in the way of development. There was confusion, he said, about ownership of the land, regulation, permitting and zoning.

"Questions come up and they’re complicated," he said.

The committee was tasked with discussing all of this, according to Barry.

"Today we begin the implementation of the vision that came out of that committee," he said. "We realize that the Park East is an extremely unique and an extremely marketable property, and in the wake of the Kohl’s pursuit all interested parties have become aligned in an effort to make this corridor succeed."

"I think it’s surprising that it’s taken this long to get to this step," said Paul Galbraith, who is senior vice president at Cresa Milwaukee, a commercial real estate brokerage firm, and a CARW member. "I’m surprised that the marketing plan has taken this long to develop."

But, he added, the lack of a marketing strategy hasn’t really been the biggest issue in getting this stretch of the Park East developed. For Galbraith, the biggest obstacle has been getting answers to the questions Abele acknowledged.

"There was no way for brokers to understand how they would get paid, if they would get paid," Galbraith said. "So they were not incentivized to work on a deal in the Park East. Even more importantly there weren’t site plans, there was no repository of information that you go to to understand which sites are available, the sizes, what the process would be, length of term, how long it would take to get a deal done."

Now that CARW has helped the city and county, who own the land, get all of that -- along with the marketing plan and RFP process -- sorted out, Galbraith believes development can move forward.

"I’m not surprised that the land has sat vacant for as long as it has," he says, noting the struggles faced by the real estate market in recent years.

"I don’t think that any deals didn’t happen because we didn’t have this in place. Deals that made sense for the area got a shot, but I think this will certainly make the process easier for the next deal that comes along.

"A commission structure has been established. A mechanism has been established to pay brokers a commission if they bring a client to the park east. That incentivizes us to bring our clients, come up with ideas, create a deal, essentially."

Bobby Tanzilo Senior Editor/Writer

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.

He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.

With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.

He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.

In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.

He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.